Military Struggle and Identity Formation in Latin America

Race, Nation, and Community During the Liberal Period

Edited by Nicola Foote and René D. Harder Horst

Publication Year: 2010

Military engagements in Latin America between 1850 and 1950 helped shape emerging nation states and collective consciousness in profound and formative ways. This century, known as the liberal period, was an important time for state formation in the region, as well as for the development of current national borders.

This collection of essays aims to assess the role black and indigenous Latin Americans played in the military struggles of this period, and how these efforts contributed to the formation of ideas about race and national identity. While some indigenous people and Afro-Latin Americans came into closer contact with the descendents of colonizers as a result of military service, others turned inward with strengthened ties to their local communities. Many were at times victims of violent conflicts in Latin America, but they surprisingly also shaped the outcome of these wars and employed the wars to advance their own political agendas. The book offers exciting new interpretations and explanations of this key period in Latin American history.

Cover

Title Page, Copyright, Dedication

Contents

List of Figures

List of Tables

Acknowledgments

The work initially emerged out of a panel at the 2006 Latin American
Studies Association annual conference in Puerto Rico, and was further developed
at the Southeast World History Association annual conference in
Boone, North Carolina, in October 2006. Thanks to the participants and
audiences of both panels
...

Map 3. Map of Argentina, Paraguay and Chile

War dominates images of Latin America. Outsiders stereotype Latin America
as a region of perpetual military struggle, a place of inexperienced and
unstable nation states where elections are more often settled by coups and
machine guns than by popular suffrage. In this picture, generals in dark
glasses manage ...

Part I. Soldiering and Citizenship

1. Subaltern Strategies of Citizenship and Soldiering in Colombia’s Civil Wars: Afro- and Indigenous Colombians’ Experiences
in the Cauca, 1851–1877

When Colombian Liberals and Conservatives confronted one another during
the 1860–63 civil war, a conservative newspaper derisively described Liberal
troops as “ferocious gangs of blacks.”1 By mid-century, Afro-Colombian
volunteers, fiercely proud of their status as soldiers, formed the backbone of
Liberal armies ...

2. Soldiers and Statesmen: Race, Liberalism, and the Paradoxes of Afro-Nicaraguan
Military Service, 1844–1863

Service in racially segregated militias in Nicaragua during the colonial period
provided a key institutional structure for both black community formation
and claims to equal citizenship. Soldiering was one of the few open avenues
for black social advancement during the colonial period, but by the 1840s
politics ...

3. Afro-Cubans in Cuba’s War for Independence,
1895–1898

When Cuban patriots launched the War for Independence against Spain
on February 24, 1895, the rebellion succeeded fully only in Oriente, the
region with a significant population of African descent and a tradition of
struggle against Spanish colonialism.1 From the insurgency’s beginning,
blacks and mulattos ...

4. Monteneros and Macheteros: Afro-Ecuadorian and Indigenous Experiences of Military Struggle in Liberal Ecuador, 1895–1930

The Liberal Revolution that came to power in 1895 and maintained ideological
hegemony until 1944 represented a crucial period in the development
of Ecuador as a nation-state. The Liberal state sought to impose farreaching
political and economic change, centered around the development
of a secular state, ...

5. Race and Ethnicity in the Guatemalan Army, 1914

The relationship that holds, and has held, between the Guatemalan Mayan
Indian population and the military establishment of the Guatemalan state
is complex and has been the subject of little social research.1 The principle
reason is that the military establishment of Guatemala has long blocked
almost ...

When in 1944 a drill sergeant at the Matamoros military barracks in Guatemala
City asked Waqxaqi’ Imox and his compatriots, “Do you want to
serve?,” they replied, “Ja [yes].” Whether these Mayan recruits responded in
their language to a Ladino (nonindigenous Guatemalan) superior is not as
important as ...

Part II. War and the Racing of National Boundaries and Imaginaries

7. Indigenous Peoples of Brazil and the War of the Triple Alliance, 1864–1870

The War of the Triple Alliance, in which the Brazilian Empire allied with Argentina
and Uruguay against Paraguay, has been the subject of much scholarly
interest since the nineteenth century.1 However, traditional works are
often highly partisan and influenced by the author’s nationality. ...

8. Illustrating Race and Nation in the Paraguayan War Era: Exploring the Decline of the Tupi Guarani Warrior as the Embodiment of Brazil

For nationalists across the globe in the nineteenth century, war invited
competitive assessments of national honor, virility, “race,” and “seriousness.”1 In this sense, the War of the Triple Alliance (better known as the
Paraguayan War in Brazil, 1864–70) is not unique, but Brazil’s racial heterogeneity
presented ...

9. The Conquest of the Desert
and the Free Indigenous Communities
of the Argentine Plains

Toward of the end of the nineteenth century, the Argentine state intensified
a policy of military expansion that would ultimately destroy the autonomous
socioeconomic systems of the indigenous peoples of the Pampas—the central plains and its surrounding areas. The origins of the war lay in
the movement ...

On September 4, 1880, the New York Times published a brief notice titled “A
Price for Victorio’s Scalp.” A single sentence in length, the piece announced
that the governor of Chihuahua, Mexico, was offering “$2,000 for the scalp
of Victorio, the Apache chief, and $250 for the scalp of any of his warriors.”1 ...

11. Embattled Identities in Postcolonial Chile: Race, Region, and Nation during the War of the Pacific,
1879–1884

This chapter examines the participation of Araucanía and indigenous Mapuche
people in the War of the Pacific, a bloody conflict fought between Chile
and its northern neighbors Peru and Bolivia in the late nineteenth century
(1879–84).1 The conflict was probably the most significant “national” experience
for Chile ...

This chapter subjects the historiography and evidence of the massacre of
Chinese immigrants in the Cañete valley by Afro-Peruvian peasants, led
by women during the War of the Pacific, to critical analysis in light of recent
discussions of the nexus of race, culture, and nation. It validates the
motives of the peasants ...

13. Crossfire, Cactus, and Racial Constructions: The Chaco War and Indigenous People in Paraguay

Between 1932 and 1935, Bolivia and Paraguay fought a brutal war for ownership
of the sparsely populated Chaco territory. Having lost its outlet to
the Pacific in the earlier War of the Pacific, 1879–84, Bolivia sought fluvial
access to the Atlantic via the Paraguay River. Both nations debated the possibility
of ...

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